March 09, 2014
Windows 8
Yesterday I was on a friends computer for a bit and had my first real interaction with Windows 8.
My God.
It's full of suck.
Windows 8 is a failgasm. This is not merely different, it seems to be designed to be aggressively non-intuitive and intentionally bothersome to use. It seems to take malevolent glee in sending the user places he or she does not want to go to promote features unrelated to anything the user is trying to do...just browsing files is a remarkably bothersome operation. I asked my friend how it was working for him after several months of getting used to the systems quirks. His answer was a series of violent gestures punctuated with expletives.
There's always griping about the changes made in a new OS so I'd racked the complaints up to hyperbole. I apologize to everyone I'd doubted.
After much pondering on this matter, I have hypothesized a solution...
Comments are disabled.
Post is locked.
My God.
It's full of suck.
Windows 8 is a failgasm. This is not merely different, it seems to be designed to be aggressively non-intuitive and intentionally bothersome to use. It seems to take malevolent glee in sending the user places he or she does not want to go to promote features unrelated to anything the user is trying to do...just browsing files is a remarkably bothersome operation. I asked my friend how it was working for him after several months of getting used to the systems quirks. His answer was a series of violent gestures punctuated with expletives.
There's always griping about the changes made in a new OS so I'd racked the complaints up to hyperbole. I apologize to everyone I'd doubted.
After much pondering on this matter, I have hypothesized a solution...
..though I am hesitant to suggest it to my friend.
Posted by: The Brickmuppet at
09:55 PM
| Comments (7)
| Add Comment
Post contains 166 words, total size 1 kb.
1
Do I prefer Windows 7? Sure. Is Windows 8 as bad as everybody makes it out to be? No, not even close. See, the "land of the colored squares" can be exited for a desktop with one mouseclick... and can be turned off in 8.1, I've been told.
It took me a couple of days to get used to it. After that, it's been fine, except I did something to my sound driver. So it goes.
It took me a couple of days to get used to it. After that, it's been fine, except I did something to my sound driver. So it goes.
Posted by: Wonderduck at Sun Mar 9 23:26:39 2014 (OLSt7)
2
I loathe it, even with the 8.1 "Upgrade". Everything I need to do that I normally do under Windows 7 I can barely even FIND.
Recent Apps? Ha! Recent Documents? Double Ha!
Added an ap that doesn't have in installer (like WhiteRain) you wanna send that to the start menu? Ha^3! No start menu! You might be able to put an icon on the desktop, but then you have to hide all your aps to get to it.
And then there are all the user interface elements that don't actually HAVE any kind of visual interface. If you're lucky, they MIGHT show up if the mouse drifts over them, and if they do, you must interact with the machine to get rid of them. (the "Charms" on the right hand edge are the worst ones for me. Although I recently discovered another secret interface thing in the upper left corner.
Recent Apps? Ha! Recent Documents? Double Ha!
Added an ap that doesn't have in installer (like WhiteRain) you wanna send that to the start menu? Ha^3! No start menu! You might be able to put an icon on the desktop, but then you have to hide all your aps to get to it.
And then there are all the user interface elements that don't actually HAVE any kind of visual interface. If you're lucky, they MIGHT show up if the mouse drifts over them, and if they do, you must interact with the machine to get rid of them. (the "Charms" on the right hand edge are the worst ones for me. Although I recently discovered another secret interface thing in the upper left corner.
Posted by: Mauser at Mon Mar 10 05:55:10 2014 (TJ7ih)
3
It's a bad tablet interface. On a desktop operating system. Which works about as well as you'd expect, and sometimes not even that.
That said, the OS kernel underneath the crappy UI is the best Microsoft have ever produced. If only they'd kept the Windows 7 UI, which was the best UI they've ever produced (though far from perfect)...
For those of us stuck in the real world, there's Start8 from Stardock. Costs $5, takes 30 seconds to install, and gets rid of all the worst cretinisms.
That said, the OS kernel underneath the crappy UI is the best Microsoft have ever produced. If only they'd kept the Windows 7 UI, which was the best UI they've ever produced (though far from perfect)...
For those of us stuck in the real world, there's Start8 from Stardock. Costs $5, takes 30 seconds to install, and gets rid of all the worst cretinisms.
Posted by: Pixy Misa at Mon Mar 10 06:10:35 2014 (PiXy!)
4
What Pixy said. The underlying system is better than 7 and Vista (don't laugh, I never had day one of a problem with Vista). Install Start8 from Stardock. 99% of the interface will go back to Windows 7.
Posted by: Ben at Mon Mar 10 09:29:12 2014 (Oftf2)
5
Classic Shell gets rid of most of the touch-only design for free; I haven't tried Start8. I upgraded my old netbook to 8.1 for testing, and with that installed it's pretty much back to normal.
After two months with my Surface Pro 2, I have to say that I think it's actually a pretty reasonable tablet interface, compared to my iPhone and my Android tablet. That is, they all suck in different ways, and I think iOS and Android would be worse front-ends to a real OS.
-j
After two months with my Surface Pro 2, I have to say that I think it's actually a pretty reasonable tablet interface, compared to my iPhone and my Android tablet. That is, they all suck in different ways, and I think iOS and Android would be worse front-ends to a real OS.
-j
Posted by: J Greely at Mon Mar 10 11:05:57 2014 (+cEg2)
6
Windows 8 takes some getting used to, definitely, and there are some real annoyances (like "How do I sleep the computer" that were fixed in 8.1, thankfully,) but it's really not that bad. I've been using it since the first public preview and I've come to like the start screen. Microsoft crippled the start menu in Vista, anyway, when they crammed it down into a small, scrolling rectangle, and took away the ability to sort it. The screen, you can sort, the hit targets are all much larger, you get control over what you see on the small vs the full menu, and so on. I wonder how many people don't realize there's a way to rearrange the icons?
MS claims their research says most people don't use the menu much anyway, but pin shortcuts to the desktop and taskbar. From what I've seen of people's desktop (I do a lot of remote desktopping into clients' machines to help troubleshoot or with installations) I think there's probably a lot of truth to that.
MS claims their research says most people don't use the menu much anyway, but pin shortcuts to the desktop and taskbar. From what I've seen of people's desktop (I do a lot of remote desktopping into clients' machines to help troubleshoot or with installations) I think there's probably a lot of truth to that.
Posted by: RickC at Tue Mar 11 15:53:26 2014 (ECH2/)
7
I know a guy who absolutely loves loves loves Windows 8 on his tablet, and he says Windows 8 is the only truly intuitive system he's ever used. (And he's a kid who's done a lot of gaming and computer stuff during his life, and owned a lot of different systems.)
So apparently the designers were all secretly working for him.
So apparently the designers were all secretly working for him.
Posted by: Suburbanbanshee at Tue Mar 11 19:08:11 2014 (mpHLh)
33kb generated in CPU 0.128, elapsed 2.0794 seconds.
69 queries taking 2.0693 seconds, 362 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
69 queries taking 2.0693 seconds, 362 records returned.
Powered by Minx 1.1.6c-pink.
